Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, a real-life PhD student who became a whistleblower on an agricultural business when their practices become unlawful. Valued as a rising star at the company, Whitacre secretly set about compiling hours of video footage of malpractice over several years which revealed one of the biggest price-fixing scandals in history.

After the scandal was uncovered, Whitacre suffered a mental breakdown, spiralling into a life of bizarre behaviour and mania from the pressures of his undercover work. The Informant recounts his story with a darkly comic sensibility.